


It Was Enough

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Light Bondage, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Draco's wedding day, Harry reflects on the relationship they shared over the last summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Was Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very quiet fic. I suppose you could say it's understated angst, or angst that should be there and isn't.

The _Prophet_ that morning carried the story on the front page. Of course it would, Harry thought with a faint flicker of amusement as he picked up the paper and folded it down so that he could see the photograph without looking at the headline. It wasn’t every day that _NOTORIOUS BACHELOR DRACO MALFOY GETS MARRIED!_

Harry looked at the picture. It showed Malfoy standing with his hand on his bride’s back, while she looked up at him in trust and what some people would probably say was adoration. She had long blonde hair, and brilliant green eyes. Harry knew that before he glanced at the picture, because Malfoy had told him once, flatly, that he would take no lover who didn’t have green eyes.

Astoria Greengrass. That was her name. Harry thought the name was a good omen. She would bring greener grass to the gardens of Malfoy Manor, and greenery to Malfoy’s heart. She had a timorous, pale, heart-shaped face, and a wide red bow of a mouth. She wore a golden robe that set off her coloring and made her look like a phantom of the summer sun seen through leaves.

_But no more than a phantom_ , Harry thought as he laid the paper on the table, still looking at the photograph. 

This time, his graze shifted to the bridegroom. Malfoy wore robes in a paler shade of gold, as though he had wanted to complement his hair. His face was stern, but had a sort of hard satisfaction in it as he looked down at Astoria. It was his right hand that rested on her back; his left hand was smoothing a strand of hair out of her face.

Harry closed his eyes and remembered.

*

He’d thought he might go for a walk along the beach. He had chosen this place almost randomly, on a whim, when his superiors had told him that he was _required_ to take a holiday. Harry didn’t understand how someone could possibly be forced to take a holiday, but apparently the Ministry had some strange rules, and some people had counted how many days in a row the Chosen One had spent at work.

The “retreat” turned out to be a large, renovated manor house on the shores of the Mediterranean. At least, Harry thought it was the Mediterranean. He’d never been good at geography. All that mattered was that the sea was a clear blue-green and the beach, whether as the result of magic or nature, was a neatly groomed blanket of golden sand.

He wandered along the sand, pausing now and then to pick up a weed or shell that had washed ashore or throw a bit of sand or stone into the water. The waves rolled in endlessly, and the sun was going down over the ocean, but slowly, as if there was no hurry. Harry found himself relaxing almost against his will. It was hard to believe this place even existed in the same world with Dark wizards determined to take his head off.

“Potter?”

The voice should have made him tense up again, but the sea was stronger. Harry just turned his head, nodded, said, “Malfoy,” and then turned away again and kept walking.

Maybe his voice, in turn, was stronger than Malfoy’s instinctive impulse to rudeness. At least, he walked beside Harry, and seemed reluctant to interrupt. Harry gathered up a smooth white shell, studied it a minute, and then tucked it in his pocket.

“Do you even know what kind of shell that is?” Malfoy asked.

Harry looked at him. “No,” he said peacefully. “Should I?”

Malfoy shook his head and smiled. Harry raised his eyebrows. He thought it was the first time he’d ever seen Malfoy smile in genuine amusement, rather than because something cruel was about to happen to someone else. “No. But a true collector would take the time to appreciate the price of every piece he picks up.”

“No reason for me to,” Harry said, and went on walking. He wondered if Malfoy would leave him now, disgusted by his less-than-mercenary motives for keeping the shell.

But Malfoy didn’t. He moved easily on beside Harry, and invited himself back to Harry’s table when Harry went in for a drink. They sat together watching the sun continue to descend, finally turning the sky red with continuous light the way Harry had been taught to expect sunsets to do from paintings. They didn’t talk often, though now and then Malfoy said something about shells, or about the Manor, or about the way his mother went to visit his father in Azkaban every day. Harry drank, and listened.

Somehow, the evening ended with Malfoy looked at him with some intensity and saying, “Do you want me to show you the flying horses tomorrow? They have some wonderful Abraxans here.”

“Sure,” Harry said, even though he’d never had any interest in Abraxans before. On the other hand, he’d never found Malfoy interesting, either.

Malfoy nodded, and on that note they parted.

*

Harry sipped his tea and rearranged the paper so that he could watch the photograph move more easily. Malfoy’s hand dipped and moved the strand of hair further from Astoria’s mouth, and his eyes softened. Astoria flushed all over and dipped her head. Then she lifted it, and Malfoy’s hand moved back, and the cycle began again.

Harry smiled. If the pictured Astoria was anything like the real one, she would make Malfoy a good wife. She had the right kind of yielding submission that you’d need to live with Malfoy for any period of time.

God knew _he_ hadn’t had it, either the first time they rode Abraxans together or after.

*

“Don’t lean _against_ the wind, Potter! Don’t you know how hard that makes it for the horse to carry you?”

“No, I bloody well don’t,” Harry snapped, struggling with the reins that seemed to do less than nothing to control the damn horse, “since I’ve never bloody well ridden one of these bloody things before, and you bloody well know it.”

The Abraxan beneath him shied sideways at Merlin knew what—probably dandelion pollen blowing in the wind—and tossed its head. Harry gave up on trying to make his broom-flying skills work for him and simply flung himself down, wrapping his arms around the horse’s neck and clinging for dear life.

“ _Honestly_ , Potter.” 

Malfoy darted into view beside him, controlling his horse with quick and delicate movements that made it hover like a hummingbird. He reached over and snatched Harry’s reins, winding them around his own wrist. The Abraxan promptly calmed and stood in midair, flicking its tail and looked around innocently. Harry eyed it. He could almost imagine it saying, _Who, me, difficult to ride?_

“It’s simple,” Malfoy was saying. “But I forget that not everyone has had the advantages of my upbringing.”

Harry looked at him, about to sharply agree with the fact and disagree with the part about “advantages,” and then saw Malfoy’s face. Warm and flushed and angry and _human_. The words caught in his throat for no reason.

Malfoy turned towards him, probably because the silence on Harry’s end had surprised him, and froze. 

They sat there watching each other. Malfoy’s flush turned to paleness, and then came back again. He swallowed. Harry stared. He was sure that any moment, one of them would say something to break the spell, and then he would understand what had happened.

But they returned to the ground in silence. It was probably completely unnoticeable and unremarkable from a distance. 

There was only one thing that marked it as strange, as something that had a dimension they couldn’t talk to someone else about.

Malfoy touched Harry’s hand, and splayed his fingers out so that his palm lingered there, imparting warmth and something more.

*

Harry skimmed the _Prophet_ article. “Brilliant marriage…great fortune…redemption of the Malfoy name…children to inherit one of the most beautiful homes in wizarding Britain…”

It was all true. Malfoy had always wanted children, and now he would have them. Maybe more than one, but Harry was doubting that, actually. Malfoys down the generations seemed to have favored single sons, and Malfoy wasn’t one to stray from the traditions of his family.

_Except during a single summer._

Harry shook his head, and smiled, and turned the paper over so that he could keep reading the continuation of the article.

*

The knock sounded on the door of his hotel room close to midnight. Harry put down the glass of butterbeer he’d been nursing for hours and went to answer it, telling himself all the while that he had _not_ stayed awake so that this might happen. It was just that he wasn’t tired, that was all.

When he opened the door, Malfoy was standing there. Harry felt a little shock hit him, like an insect flying into his eye, which told him how much part of him hadn’t been expecting this. He stood there with his hand on the door and gaped at Malfoy for no reason.

“Potter…” Malfoy said, and then shook his head. “Why should I have to talk? We both know what I’m here for.”

Harry said afterwards that he leaned in first. Malfoy said it was him. There was no reason to think that the dispute would ever be resolved. 

Malfoy’s hands clamped like talons on Harry’s shoulders and drove him across the room towards the bed. Harry didn’t mind at first, because he was concentrating on drowning Malfoy with his tongue. But he noticed when Malfoy pressed him onto his back and promptly flipped them so that Malfoy lay beneath him.

Malfoy narrowed his eyes as though squinting against sunlight. “I don’t _think_ so, Potter,” he said, and pressed again, so that Harry tumbled off his body and lay beside him. Malfoy draped himself across Harry’s chest, grumbling out a half-threat as he began to lick down the expanse of Harry’s neck.

Harry flipped them over. Malfoy flipped them again. They proceeded along until, before they realized it, they ran out of bed, and fell heavily to the floor.

For a moment, they lay still, so stunned that Harry didn’t remember any _sound_. Their breathing, even their heartbeats, seemed suspended.

Then Malfoy laughed aloud, the most free and generous sound Harry had ever heard him make, and kissed him. “Let me be on top for the first time,” he whispered into Harry’s ear. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

“If it’s not important,” Harry said, squeezing the words out around the entirely unfair swipes of Malfoy’s tongue, “then let _me_ be on top the first time.”

“No.

“Then no.”

Malfoy pulled back and glared at him. “Have you ever even _done_ this before, Potter?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and laughed aloud in turn at the stunned look Malfoy gave him. “What, did you think you were seducing a virgin?”

“I thought that little Weasley of yours—”

Harry shut him up with a kiss that probably half-choked Malfoy. But he wasn’t going to talk about Ginny. What he had with her was special, and complicated, and unique. This was something different, and so were the love affairs he had had with other men. If he and Ginny ever decided they wanted each other permanently, that would be one thing, but right now they were on a break.

And Harry fully intended to enjoy it.

This time, whether it was because of the revelation or something else, Malfoy didn’t protest when Harry pinned him to the floor and settled heavily on his hips, rocking back and forth before reaching down to undo his shirt.

*

Harry turned the paper over, but even the words on the back were about the Malfoy wedding. One of the articles was an interview with the bride’s mother, whose blush and simper as she wished the young couple “as happy a life as I’ve had with Astoria’s father” seemed to leak through the words.

Harry chuckled. Malfoy would hate having a mother-in-law like that. If she’d pushed the marriage as a way of spending her time in the luxurious surroundings of Malfoy Manor, she would probably find herself disappointed.

Of course, Harry knew nothing about Astoria’s family. For all he knew, they were rich on their own and simply wanted to secure a pure-blood heir by marrying their daughter to a wizard who, for all his faults, was definitely a pure-blood.

He turned back to the front again. This time, it seemed as though there was a predatory look in Malfoy’s eyes as he gazed down at Astoria, though the picture hadn’t changed. Harry’s perceptions might have, though.

_Will he try to consume her_? Harry thought idly as he finished his tea and started in on his eggs. _And is she the type to let herself be consumed_?

*

“I don’t think you’ve done this before.”

“That’s _your_ virgin arse talking,” Harry retorted as he coated his fingers with the shimmering lubricant he’d conjured and pushed two of them into Malfoy’s hole at once.

Malfoy let out a strangled squawk and lifted his arse as if he wanted to get away from Harry’s fingers. Harry sat back, grinning, and enjoyed the show. It was quite something, to be spearing Malfoy like this as the git sprawled naked in Harry’s bed, white thighs parted to show off something Harry had once assumed he would have no interest in seeing.

Malfoy was all white and pink under his clothes, as if he were some pure, unplucked rose. From the movements he was making now on Harry’s fingers, though, Harry sincerely doubted that either of those adjectives really applied.

He slid his fingers deeper, and Malfoy panted and glared at him, red lips parted, eyes so dark that it looked as if he couldn’t see out of them. Several times he licked his lips and drew in his breath as if he would speak, but always his eyes glazed and he became at a loss for words.

Harry worked him until he seemed half-dead to the world and his half-formed words had become half-formed gasps. Then Harry tossed the tube of lubricant aside and set about arranging Malfoy’s legs the way he wanted them.

Malfoy woke up a bit during that, and glared at Harry haughtily. Before this, Harry would have said that no one could look haughty with their arse about to get fucked, but Malfoy seemingly lived to prove him wrong. “I don’t think you can be as good as I need you to be, Potter,” he said, a final challenge.

“Of course not,” Harry said, and Malfoy blinked, caught off-guard by what must have seemed like agreement.

“I’m better,” Harry added, and slid into Malfoy’s arse.

It was tight, of course. It was always tight. And it was warm, but it was always warm. What made Harry bow his head and pant had nothing to do with friction and everything to do with _whose_ heat and tightness he was feeling wrapped around his cock right now.

Soon enough Malfoy was rocking and trying to claw at his shoulders and complaining that he was going far too slowly. Harry rocked in response, and Malfoy shut up with a low wail. He tossed his head back, sweat-plastered hair hanging straight beside the pale curve of his neck, and crooned to an invisible god.

Harry neither took his time nor hurried. He fucked, pushing in with good, long strokes and only slightly adjusting his angle so that he could find Malfoy’s prostate. Malfoy gabbled at him when he’d found it, and after that Harry could concentrate on seeking his pleasure, while watching Malfoy’s.

Malfoy was just as furious in fucking himself back, in stretching and straining his limbs and closing his eyes when he wanted to and opening them sometimes and otherwise acting like what most people thought the word “uninhibited” meant, while at the same time never losing his dignity and acting foolish the way that word usually implied. He sucked air through his teeth. He wailed when Harry hit his prostate twice in a row. He left bloody trails down the one of Harry’s shoulders that he did manage to reach. But he didn’t look foolish.

Harry slammed him with more regularity and speed sooner than he had thought would happen, as his body gripped him and threw him into the end of the race. He took hold of Malfoy’s cock then, where he hadn’t bothered touching it before, and fingered the head. Malfoy responded with a gasp that seemed to take in and then release half the air in the room at once, and froze, shaking.

Wetness bathed Harry’s wrist. He gave in the next moment, and _came_ with a strength that soothed him, uplifted him, shook him apart.

Emptied him.

He opened his eyes to find himself resting on Malfoy’s chest and Malfoy staring at him with smug, half-lidded eyes. He cradled the back of Harry’s skull in both hands, as if he found satisfaction in holding him there, and his stroking of Harry’s hair was constant, deep, self-satisfied.

Possessive.

“I’m going to do that to you, soon,” he whispered. “I hope that you realize that.”

Harry responded with a weak murmur and shut his eyes again. At the moment, he wasn’t capable of thinking about the future.

*

Harry cocked his head as a new thought occurred to him. _Should I send him a letter of congratulations?_

Then he rolled his eyes and snorted. There was a level of presumption he wasn’t capable of. And Malfoy wouldn’t expect congratulations from him; he wouldn’t be thinking of Harry at all, but of his new bride.

_And that is the way it should be. God knows that I never thought of him much when it was all over._

*

Malfoy had been watching Harry with eyes in which flames leaped all day. Harry was aware of that, and able to ignore him magnificently. He wandered through the day, by the beach and around the hotel’s gardens and around his room. Malfoy was always near him, but that fact didn’t matter. Sleeping with Malfoy had set Harry free of an old conception of himself. Even with his prior male lovers, Harry had needed courtship and serious conversations and time looking at them in the moonlight. He had thought he was some high-hearted, noble person, incapable of casual sex, a little stuffy, a little prudish, needing more things than Malfoy could offer him in order to have fun. 

It was kind of a relief to realize that he was no such thing, and he owed Malfoy for the realization. But the upshot of it was that he wanted to think about himself, the new person he had become, not the person who had made him so.

Then he came into the room that night and Malfoy held him against the wall with his hands and his legs and then just his mouth, kissing him until Harry’s throat was like a desert and his heartbeat like a drum. When Malfoy pulled back and gave him a dangerous look, Harry couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“I’m taking you tonight,” Malfoy said. His voice admitted of no argument.

Harry didn’t give him one. That was how he learned another aspect of himself: he was a person who could take orders and submit when he wanted to.

Malfoy pushed him onto the bed, paused, and then cast a spell that linked Harry’s wrists to the bedposts with light chains. Harry rattled them, to test their strength. He thought of telling Malfoy that he didn’t need them, then said nothing. Malfoy might remove the chains if he asked, and Harry wanted them there.

Malfoy kissed him, furiously, biting his lip until it split, making Harry try to reach him until he remembered his hands were bound. Then Malfoy undressed him with grand sweeping motions that made cloth rip. Harry muttered a protest that Malfoy paid no attention to. 

He worked in silence to prepare Harry. That was what Harry most remembered about that part of it afterwards. They had talked and complained at each other when Harry was preparing Malfoy; this was quiet.

But when Malfoy lifted Harry’s hips and made him spread his legs and then claimed his eyes and his arse at the same time, he gave a long groan, and Harry echoed him back with an open-mouthed, windy sound that was on the edge of a whimper.

“Mine,” Malfoy whispered as he began to thrust. Harry shuddered and then began to writhe. He knew he was pulling on the chains and that he was chafing his wrists. It didn’t seem to matter. He was on fire, and Malfoy was _inside_ him, and if he had experienced something like this before that still didn’t mean he had experienced _this_.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Harry began to chant. It continued until he bit his own lip to get it to stop, which made the little cut Malfoy had left there open and spill blood down his chin. Malfoy whined when he saw that and leaned forwards to kiss him again. His belly touched Harry’s cock.

Harry came without further pressure. Malfoy paused and panted down at him with hot eyes, making Harry take in his shame and his pleasure before Malfoy continued in the pursuit of his own.

Harry lay there, staring up at him, and knew that he would never forget any of this—not the way the light from the lamp in the room filtered through Malfoy’s splayed golden lashes, not the way his neck trembled and flushed as he took Harry, not the grunts he made between teeth that had been clenched specifically to keep those sounds from escaping.

When Malfoy came, he did it with a wail and an especially hard thrust that lit Harry’s arse on fire. Harry lay still until Malfoy finished his orgasm and then rattled his chains as Malfoy slumped onto his chest.

“Don’t you think you should free me?” he asked pointedly. “I don’t want to spend the night like this.”

“You’ll spend the night how I like it,” Malfoy said softly, lifting his head and looking at him. Harry caught his breath. One hard fuck hadn’t dissipated the flames there, the way Harry thought it would have. He had assumed that Malfoy wanted to have him mainly to redress the fact that Harry had topped last night, but it seemed to be more than that. 

“Like this,” Malfoy continued, and reached for his wand.

The chains moved down the bedposts, so that Harry could rest his arms more comfortably. At the same time, the cuffs grew padded on the inside, and the wounds that Harry had already opened grew numb and mostly closed.

“But you’re going to stay chained,” Malfoy murmured, and then kissed him savagely once more and fell asleep on top of him.

Harry assumed that he’d never be able to sleep like that, but he underestimated himself. In the morning, Malfoy was the one who woke up first and woke Harry by tracing the curve of his chin as delicately as someone trying to take a photograph of a sunrise. 

*

Harry looked again at the photograph. He hadn’t noticed it before, but Astoria had a shy smile that she now and then gave the pictured, protective Malfoy. That made her look less frightened of him, more willing.

Harry smiled. _No wonder he chose her. He would want someone who obeyed, but not someone who cowered._

Their marriage had a chance of lasting, Harry thought. That was good. He would want Malfoy to have some kind of permanency in his life. There was no sense in his every season being as fleeting as the summer he had shared with Harry.

*

Harry knew the summers went fast. They always had, once he left Hogwarts. If he didn’t have to spend time with the Dursleys, they were full of golden light and long days and heat that blazed past and was gone. Even on the days that it rained, he thought the trees were greener than usual, the skies lighter.

Of course, that could all be self-delusion, based on the contrast of his present summers with his past ones. He was sure Draco would say that was all it was.

But this summer went fleeing as though it was an Abraxan with a fire lit under its tail. Harry would wake and, in the time it would take him to trace a line down Draco’s chest or wring a single gasp from him, it would be evening and Draco would be trying to make him dance at one of the small parties the hotel sometimes held or suggesting what he should eat.

They maintained separate rooms, but that was only a pretense that didn’t fool anyone who looked at them. Harry owled the Head Auror and told her he was taking a few months off.

Even then, though they hadn’t actually spoken about it, they knew what they shared would end with the summer.

Draco swam in the Mediterranean, lifting his head above the water and shaking it from his hair, then diving back down beneath the waves again. Harry lay on the shore and watched him. He’d never learned to swim the same way, and besides, he thought Draco was at his most beautiful like this, yellow and white among the blue. Harry wouldn’t be able to see that if he was down in the water with him.

They sat on a terrace behind the hotel one night, which Harry would never have found if it wasn’t for Draco, and watched the sun dying in splendor above them. Harry had never seen that many shades of gold. Draco sighed and put his head on Harry’s shoulder.

They rowed for so long one morning that they both went hoarse, and went stomping off to opposite sides of the room to sulk in mutual hatred. Harry ended up turning around and going back to Draco to apologize, even though he had to cast a Healing Charm on his throat to do so, because he missed him so much.

They fucked on the bed, on the floor, in the shower, against the door, against the wall, and against the toilet, on a day that Harry’s back still reminded him of with shooting twinges of pain. When he was inside Draco, Harry was sure that he would never experience anything like this again. When Draco was inside him, Harry would pant and shut his eyes and try to avoid betraying too much, because Draco’s eyes were merciless.

The summer fled.

*

_I hope she can share that with him_ , Harry thought, brushing his finger along above Astoria’s face without touching it. He had always been reluctant to touch the people in wizarding photographs, because he wasn’t sure how much pain they could feel. _A lifelong marriage. I don’t know if passion will be part of it, but at least consistency will be. Malfoy will like that._

Harry smiled in spite of himself as he remembered the way Malfoy’s hair had looked, rucked around his head on the last day they were together, and how that contrasted so sharply with the way it looked now, sleek and held perfectly in place.

_Be as good to him as you can_ , he thought to Astoria. _I’m not his lover any longer, but I want him to be happy._

*

“This is the end.”

Harry nodded and held his hand out. Malfoy stood looking at him with such disdain in his eyes that Harry dropped the hand back to his side again. 

_Well, of course I’m going to be nervous and awkward_ , he thought defensively. _I’ve never left a lover behind before, knowing we’ll never be together again_. He had always thought that he might look up his other male lovers someday, and what he had with Ginny was an eternal circle, like nothing else in his life.

“Tell me,” Malfoy said, as if he thought that Harry had been waiting for this question, “do you regret it?”

Harry blinked, met his eyes, and said, “No,” to the hard challenge there.

“Do you wish it could have lasted longer?” Malfoy asked.

Harry thought about it, and then shook his head. The summer was in his soul and always would be when he thought of Malfoy, but he’d known it was impossible for it to be permanent from the beginning. Malfoy wanted a family. So did Harry. And even if Malfoy had been willing to give up any children or wife he might possibly have in the future, for Harry there was Ginny, ever and always. “No,” he said, somewhat surprised to find himself saying that.

“Well, then.” Malfoy smiled, and only from the way the lines in his face relaxed did Harry realize how afraid he’d been of a different answer. “Then there’s no need for either of us to act defensive about this. We’ll kiss and part.” He paused, then leaned forwards and kissed Harry for the last time. That kiss, present and real as it was, felt like a lovely memory to Harry, and he saw what Malfoy meant.

“It was…it was just _enough_ , wasn’t it?” Harry asked thoughtfully. “I think anything more would have ruined it.”

“Exactly.” Malfoy clasped his wrist for a moment. “Thank you for learning that lesson,” he added. “So few people ever do.”

And then he strode away, his strong legs and back flexing in movements that Harry knew intimately, and Harry was left to wonder, idly, what would happen if they should meet again.

Then he smiled. He knew exactly what would happen. They would nod at each other before they passed into the rest of their casually separated lives.

*

_Be good to him, that’s all I ask_ , Harry thought as he looked down at the picture of Astoria, knowing, even if no one else would have believed it, that his thought was entirely without jealousy. _Be what he needs to be permanent._

The fireplace flared. Harry started and put aside the newspaper. He’d sat over it for longer than he’d thought, but given the circumstances, he decided that could be allowed.

“Harry?” asked a well-known voice from the flames. It was the voice of part of his past, and Harry strongly suspected it would become his future.

He leaned forwards and smiled. “Hullo, Ginny,” he said. “What are you doing tonight?”

The End.


End file.
